YouTube serves up ads to ‘millions’ of mobile users

Google Inc. is toying with display ads on its popular YouTube mobile site.
The dominant online player said is has begun placing marketing messages on “select pages” of YouTube’s mobile site in the United States and Japan.
“This is our first step in testing mobile advertising for YouTube – it will give you a new way to interact with content on the go, while allowing us to learn how video viewers engage with mobile advertising,” Christine Tsai, product marketing manager for YouTube, posted on Google’s blog. “Our test advertisers will also have an additional branding tool at their disposal and the opportunity to reach the millions of people who visit YouTube every day on their phones.”
The move is Google’s latest effort to wring revenues out of YouTube, which – like many other social networking sites – is more effective at drawing traffic than generating revenues. Google spent $1.65 billion on the site two years ago, but industry watchers say YouTube will earn only about $100 million this year.
Google earlier this year made YouTube’s entire catalog available for mobile users, and Apple’s iPhone offers an embedded application for the site.